Staves, Times, and Notes

Staves, Times, and Notes The musical staff or stave is the structure designed for writing western music. The written staff has five lines and four spaces. Each staff has a clef symbol, a key signature, and a time signature. The lines and spaces of the staff represent pitches or notes. As we read higher on the lines and spaces the pitch of our note increases. And The names of the notes are always the same on the staff no matter what key signature is indicated. To go above and below a staff we use ledger lines. These lines repeat the staff above and below our main staff. If our music has multiple voices lower than our treble clef then we can switch to bass clef. The lines of the bass clef are g, b, d, f, and a. The corresponding spaces are a, c, e, and g There are three common clef symbols, treble, bass, and alto. For this course, we are only going to be dealing with the treble clef. It is the primary staff for the music we will play. The staff is divided into sections called measures. Measures are separated by bars. Music can be listed in as many bars as are necessary. There is music notation that allows written music to be shortened by including repeats, go to statements, and short cuts. Each piece of written music has a time signature at the beginning. Time signatures can change anywhere in a piece and the change is indicated by a new

time signature. The time signature can be repeated on each new staff, however, if the time signature doesn't change frequently it may be omitted on staves following the first one or following a staff where the time signature changes. Time signatures tell us length of a measure in beats and which note type we use to count on. 4/4 or C/common time means that there are four beats to a measure and the quarter note gets one beat. ¾ means that there are three beats to a measure and the quarter note gets one beat. For this course we will only be working with music in common time (4/4) and ¾ waltz time. Music is sound arranged into order as pitches. On the guitar a pitch is played by picking or plucking an open string or placing a finger on a string over the fretboard of the guitar and then picking the string. The string vibrates at a specific frequency that our ears interpret as a tone. Pitch can be thought of as frequency. The faster a string vibrates the higher the pitch we will hear. The lower the frequency the lower the pitch. We read pitches as notes of music on a staff. On the guitar we learn fingerings that are positions on the fretboard of the guitar that correspond to a note on the staff. For a guitar that uses standard tunings the notes on the staff will always be in the same place on the fretboard. Reading music is the same as reading text with the exception that we have rules for duration or the length of each word. Each of the notes in the example above represents a position on the fretboard of the guitar. When played in sequence they produce organized notes or tones of the C Major scale. Notes A musical note gives us more information than a written word of text. It tells us it's pitch, where to put our fingers on the fretboard, when to play it, and how

long to let the note sustain. A notes duration is specified by it's type. A whole note lasts for an entire measure. A half note will last for half a measure. A quarter note will last for one beat of a measure and so on. Note duration can also be changed by adding a dot. to the note increasing its value by one half. A note can be shortened in duration into eights, sixteenths, and thirty-second notes by adding flags or beams to them. In music we may want periods where we don't play. This adds rhythm and color to our music. We note these periods of silence using rests. There is a corresponding rest symbol to each note length. In addition there are some shortcuts that indicate rests of many measures. Notes can also be sharp or flat. Sharp means to raise the note one half step in pitch or one fret on the guitar. Flat means to lower the pitch one half step or down one fret on the guitar. Sharps are indicated with a # and flats with a. Notes that are sharp and flat can have multiple names. For example C# is the same note as D. There is one other important pitch symbol and that is the natural sign. This means that if you are in a key that says a note should be sharp or flat then the natural key says play the note as you would in the key of C. A natural symbol looks like this. Reading music from a staff is to learn where on our instrument each note is played and for how long to play it. For our course we will not be reading music. Our focus is on chords and basic chord construction

Scales, Intervals, Degrees The staff itself is a scale. It's called the chromatic scale and is a continuous series of half steps. The chromatic scale beginning at the note c one octave below middle c and finishing on middle c: The chromatic scale represents all of the possible notes available in one octave. The sequence repeats through all of the octaves. In other words, there are just 12 possible notes repeated through seven or eight octaves. If you look at the staff above you'll see that there are eight notes listed. The notes are c d e f g a b and c. These are the notes of the C Major scale. The major scale is the basis of all western music. There are seven unique tones and the last is the first tone repeated one octave or eight positions higher than the original. The notes of a major scale are separated by intervals that are mix of steps and half steps. These intervals are crucial to learning how music works. The intervals for all major scales are always the same. Step, step, step, half step, step, step, step, half step. By starting at any note and playing up in pitch using these intervals, we play the major scale in the key that corresponds to the first note. So if we play an 'A' note then apply the intervals to get the notes a, b, c#, d, e, f#, g#, and a for the A major scale. The scale repeats up and down the staff using these same intervals or degrees of the scale. It is important to start to think of these steps in terms of their degree. Degree of the scale is its position in the scale. The positions are First, second, third, forth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. In music they are listed as roman numerals. I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII

Each of the Degrees of the scale has a name. The names are: Tonic Supertonic Mediant Subdominant Dominant Submedient Leading Tone We will only discuss the Tonic and Dominant for this course so there is no need to memorize this list. However, it is important to remember which step and degree of the scale correspond as we'll see in the next section. Chords, Triads, and Chemistry A chord is a series of at least three notes or pitches played at the same time. These three notes are a triad. In music a chord is made up of a series of the notes or a triad from the major scale. The series of notes that we choose determines the family of voicing of the chords we play. A voicing is a type of variation of the major chord. The major triad is the first, third, and fifth degrees or intervals of the major scale. If we are in the key of C we have the following notes to choose from: If we look at the first, third, and fifth notes we see c, e, and g. These notes make the c major scale. In music, this is said as one, three, five.

The rules that we follow are like chemistry. If we combine certain elements we will always get a predictable compound. Hydrogen and oxygen mixed together in appropriate amounts always gives us water. It's a formula. If we apply rules or formulas to chord construction we will always get a predictable chord sound. When we look at the example above written as a chord we get the following staff: If we use our example of going from our c major scale to an a major scale we can apply our chord formula of taking the one, three, and five or a, c#, and e. Remember that we are in a new key, the key of A Major. All of our c, f, and g notes are sharp. We choose the one, three, and five and we get the a major chord: This approach works with every note on our staff. We go to the note and play the intervals to get the major scale. Once we have those notes we can take the first, third, and fifth notes and play them together to get the major chord named for the first note in the major scale we played. Chords are normally written using their letter name and their voice. The C major chord is written as: Cmaj. The C minor chord is Cmin. There are other conventions as well. You may see Cmaj and Cmin as CM and Cm with the upper and lowercase letters standing in for Major and minor. It's important to distinguish a chord when you write it down or call it out. D can mean many things to different people. Dmaj and Dmin will help you communicate what you want more effectively. Keys When we talk about the key of a song we are talking about what notes we are playing. What major scale will work with this piece. As there are only 12

possible notes there are only 12 possible major keys. There are also minor keys. These keys are based off of the relative sixth degree of the major scale for a key. We'll cover relative minor more in a later section. The key signature is shorthand for which notes are sharp and which are flat in a major scale. In the key of C there are no sharps or flats. In the key of A major there are three sharps. This is because the interval pattern when applied up or down forces some of the notes to be sharp or flat. The key signature tells us where we are going to start, what scales we can use, what our progressions are going to be and what our tone might be. It also is an easy way to tell us what notes are sharp or flat so we don't have to write out every sharp or flat symbol. The 12 major key signatures are listed as follows: As we can see the key names have the same names as the basic 12 possible notes. The base note in the key of C major is c. This note is called the tonic or the root. We will talk about roots a lot from here to the end of the course, and you'll hear root bantered about frequently when you get with other players. From the root note we build our major scales using the intervals. Remember that the intervals never change for a type and voicing of a scale. We get the sharps and flats from the way the intervals naturally fall on the the notes of our scale. Sometimes they will be flat, natural, and sharp. It's very handy to memorize these 12 key signatures.

Chord Progressions Each of the degrees of the major scale have an associated chord that goes with it. In the key of C major the notes of our scale are c, d, e, f, g, a, b, and c. The corresponding chords are: I Cmaj II Dmin III Emin IV Fmaj V Gmaj VI Amin VII Bdim (diminished) I Cmaj In a major key the I, the IV, and the V degrees have a major voicing. The II III VI will have a minor voicing. The VII has a diminished voicing. At this point we should know how to find the root note of any key build a major scale from its root based on our intervals. Once we have our notes then we can apply the rule of corresponding chords to know what chords to play in a key. Modern music is normally made up of combinations of the chords of a key. These combinations will repeat throughout the piece to create a theme. The combinations are called chord progressions or just progressions. Let's see how this works. The most common chord progression is probably the I, IV, V. It's prevalent in country, folk, rock and roll, and blues. It's simply the first, third, and fifth chord or degree of the major scale. For C major it will be: I IV V = Cmaj = Fmaj = Gmaj Remember the notes of our scale are c, d, e, f, g, a, b, and c. From that we see that the I is c the IV is f and the V is g. In the key of A the notes of our scale are a, b, c#, d, e, f#, g#, a. Keep in mind that the key of A major has three sharps. They are c, f, g. That means that all of the c's, f's, and g's in a piece under A major will be sharp.

Our I, IV, V are: I IV V = Amaj = Dmaj = Emaj We should be able to find the chords we need or change the key of any piece by someone telling us the key they want and what the progression is. This is how we Transpose music or change it's key. Another common progression is the VI, IV, V, I or six, four, five, one. In the key of C major That would work out to: VI IV V I = Amin = Fmaj = Gmaj = Cmaj There are many many interesting variations when you put these progressions over different rhythms, use different voicings, or change instrumentation.